Four-year-old Gavyn Boscio loves to cook and asked for an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas. But when his big sister went to buy one, she discovered to her disappointment that it comes only in girly pink and purple, with girlsand only girlson the box and in the commercials.

So the eighth-grader from Garfield, N.J., started an online petition asking Pawtucket, R.I.-based Hasbro to make the toy ovens in gender-neutral colors and feature boys on the package.

By Friday, 13-year-old McKenna Popes petition had garnered more than 30,000 signatures in a little more than a week.

And celebrity chef Bobby Flay, who owned an Easy-Bake Oven as a boy, is among those weighing in on her side.

Dont know about anyone else, but this kind of stuff is what sets my teeth on edge in regards to the phrase gender neutral nowadays, since the phrase is deliberately associated with same. If that had been left out of the notion of marketing the Easy-Bake Oven to boys, then I doubt I would have had reacted negatively . . .

Of course it should be gender-neutral. That way little boys won't be embarrassed when they open the package, take the oven out to the back yard, fill it with firecrackers, and blow it over the neighbor's fence.

Other than the “gender-neutral” phrase, the article has a fair amount of merit. The advantage of the toy oven is that you don’t have to have an adult around to use it. Yes, cooking with the real thing is fun, and you do get a much wider range of dishes, but you *have* to have an adult around when the child chef is only 4 or 5. I learned on an ancient Glenwood gas stove, where the oven was lit by dropping a lit match into a hole where the burners were and turning on the gas, and the cooktop burners had to be lit with a welding striker; Mom or Dad was always around to handle that when I was small.

Yes, electric or modern gas cooking is a lot safer now, but you still can’t let a 4-year-old run one unsupervised, and that’s where the EZ-Bake comes in. The kid can “cook” on their own for fun, doing the basic things, and still do more complex stuff with a grown-up’s help.

Buy the kid a real cast iron dutch oven so he can learn to cook like a man!
He can make stew, roasts, soups, biscuits, and he can turn the lid upside down on the fire and use the inside to cook bacon and eggs!

I don’t really see the problem with this. Many boys grow up to be bakers and chefs. Look at the popularity of a show like Cake Boss. Boys like treats like cakes, brownies, and cookies as much as girls do. There’s nothing wrong with making an Easy Bake oven in a color like blue or red for boys. Some of the cookware supplies could come in fun shapes like cars and dinosaurs.

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